would have willingly recalled as soon as spoken.  But words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.  So it was with Louis Trevelyan when he told his wife that he did not wish Colonel Osborne to come so often to his house.  He had said it with a flashing eye and an angry tone; and though she had seen the eye flash before, and was familiar with the angry tone, she had never before felt herself to be insulted by her husband.  As soon as the word had been spoken Trevelyan had left the room and had gone down among his books.  But when he was alone he knew that he had insulted his wife.  He was quite aware that he should have spoken to her gently, and have explained to her, with his arm round her waist, that it would be better for both of them that this friend’s friendship should be limited.  There is so much in a turn of the eye and in the tone given to a word when such things have to be said, so much more of importance than in the words themselves.  As Trevelyan thought of this, and remembered what his manner had been, how much anger he had expressed, how far he had been from having his arm round his wife’s waist as he spoke to her, he almost made up his mind to go upstairs and to apologise.  But he was one to whose nature the giving of any apology was repulsive.  He could not bear to have to own himself to have been wrong.  And then his wife had been most provoking in her manner to him.  When he had endeavoured to make her understand his wishes by certain disparaging hints which he had thrown out as to Colonel Osborne, saying that he was a dangerous man, one who did not show his true character, a snake in the grass, a man without settled principles, and such like, his wife had taken up the cudgels for her friend, and had openly declared that she did not believe a word of the things that were alleged against him.  ‘But still for all that it is true,’ the husband had said.  ‘I have no doubt that you think so,’ the wife had replied.  ’Men do believe evil of one another, very often.  But you must excuse me if I say that I think you are mistaken.  I have known Colonel Osborne much longer than you have done, Louis, and papa has always had the highest opinion of him.’  Then Mr Trevelyan had become very angry, and had spoken those words which he could not recall.  As he walked to and fro among his books downstairs, he almost felt that he ought to beg his wife’s pardon.  He knew his wife well enough to be sure that she would not forgive him unless he did so.  He would do so, he thought, but not exactly now.  A moment would come in which it might be easier than at present.  He would be able to assure her when he went up to dress for dinner, that he had meant no harm.  They were going out to dine at the house of a lady of rank, the Countess Dowager of Milborough, a lady standing high in the world’s esteem, of whom his wife stood a little in awe; and he calculated that this feeling, if it did not make his task easy would yet take from it some of its difficulty.  Emily would be, not exactly cowed, by the prospect of Lady Milborough’s dinner, but perhaps a little reduced from her usual self-assertion.  He would say a word to her when he was dressing, assuring her that he had not intended to animadvert in the slightest degree upon her own conduct.